The Mail on Sunday

This whodunnit kept us guessing right to the very end

- Deborah Ross

The Undoing Monday, Sky Atlantic/NOW TV

Who killed Elena Alves? At first I thought it was Jonathan (Hugh Grant). Then I thought it was Grace ( Nicole Kidman). Then I thought it was their boy, Henry (Noah Jupe). Then I thought it was Grace’s friend Sylvia (Lily Rabe), because otherwise why was she there?

Then I thought it was Donald Sutherland’s eyebrows, which had a life of their own and appeared more than capable. (One could have been the lookout, one could have bludgeoned.) Then I thought it was Elena’s husband ( Ismael Cruz Córdova). Then I thought it was his boy. Then I thought it was the girl from the title sequence, because otherwise why was she there? At one point I even thought it was me. Where was I that night? But then I remembered I’d been at a medical conference in Cleveland. Or had I?

The Undoing, the high-end thriller with the high-end cast, kept us all guessing. And guessing. And guessing. If Donald Sutherland’s eyebrows didn’t do it, might they have hired an assassin? Could it have been the headmaster? Could it have been one of Grace’s coats? You have that many coats, you’d want to put them to work, right? That’s how it went until this week’s finale, when the denouement that we hoped would be stunning and delicious turned out to be… I can’t say.

I wish I could, because I have much to say about it, but there’ll be trouble if I give anything away, and letters, and calls for me to be put in the stocks. Or otherwise tortured. I may be made to watch The Singapore Grip again, from start to finish, for example. I may be made to watch another episode of Michael McIntyre’s The Wheel. I can only say that many viewers felt disappoint­ed, as if they’d been trolled, basically. But come on, let’s not be too downhearte­d. It was a fun ride, and a swanky ride, and a grippingly involving ride – whodunnit?, who? – even if it was ultimately silly. And the finale did not disappoint coat-wise. Grace’s coats deserved billing in their own right. And for this last episode she wore a sublimely stylish cream one, and a sublimely stylish deep-green one, and a sublimely stylish maroon one, none of which we’d seen before. It was a three-newcoat episode. Sometimes, you did wonder if Grace should have, perhaps, spent less time thinking about sublimely stylish coats and more time wondering who had put the dishwasher on. Twice.

This was the tale of rich, swish, Manhattan couple Grace ‘I like to stroll about at night’ Fraser and her husband, Dr Jonathan ‘magic hands’ Fraser. (Oh God, the ‘magic hands’. Bleugh!) But then their rich, swish, lives are subject to a total undoing when he is arrested for the murder of Elena (Matilda De Angelis), a fellow parent at their son’s posh school. In many respects it was, in fact, a run-of-the-mill thriller, with everyone in the frame, Agatha Christie-style, even if all the suspects were never gathered in a snowbound hotel. But this knew what it was, and knew how to pull off the formula with verve and class and commitment – and no endless flashbacks or burying of bodies in woods, which is how ITV would have done it.

Plus, it harnessed the lifestyle brilliantl­y. The flash apartments. The fundraisin­g auctions. The competitiv­e mothers. And it harnessed its star power brilliantl­y too. As directed by Susanne Bier (The Night Manager), Kidman, Grant and Sutherland – as Grace’s father – were always transfixin­g and elevated this yet more. Grant did do his charming shtick, but also brought something far deeper, while Kidman, you just couldn’t take your eyes off her. It was, actually, star power of such high wattage, it meant we were distracted from, ahem, dwelling too much on the plot’s weaker aspects. Like why, for instance, Jonathan might have arranged to be at a medical conference (supposedly) before Elena’s death.

I did notice that one. But just as it was sometimes cheesy, it was also sometimes startling – that ‘hostile breastfeed­ing’, as I now call it – and sometimes electrifyi­ng. The cliffhange­r right at the end of the fifth and penultimat­e episode. You didn’t see that coming, did you? Then you had to wait a week, as this wasn’t made available as a binge-watch. It was like old times, and you know what? I had almost forgotten what it feels like to anticipate, and what an excruciati­ng yet exquisite pleasure that can be.

There were, it’s true, several continuity errors. In the final episode, watch out for Elena’s husband sweeping the papers from Jonathan’s lawyer’s desk. You’ll see what I mean. And talking of Jonathan’s lawyer, she was played by Noma Dumezweni, who was absolutely barnstormi­ng.

All in all, while the ending might not have been as cathartic as some would have hoped, it was a terrifical­ly entertaini­ng ride. And now it’s over, even if my worries are not. The baby girl? Miguel’s little sister? What’s going go to happen to her? Really, what?

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 ??  ?? UNDONE: Donald Sutherland and Nicole Kidman in The Undoing, main picture. Inset: Kidman in one of her many coats of different colours
UNDONE: Donald Sutherland and Nicole Kidman in The Undoing, main picture. Inset: Kidman in one of her many coats of different colours

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